


tumbleweed

by leftishark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, brief mention of alcohol (of age), mention of racism and irl problems, quarter life crisis, wow another plant and bicycle fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21593074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftishark/pseuds/leftishark
Summary: When you’ve been miserable for so long you don’t know when or how it started and your former best friend who in retrospect was probably your first gay crush invites you to ride a bike halfway across the country for her brother’s graduation—Acxa knows not to pass up an opportunity like that.
Relationships: Acxa/Veronica (Voltron), mentions of hunkade and sheith
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29





	tumbleweed

**Author's Note:**

> for qrojpag for the veracxa exchange! the prompts were road trip and reunion—I hope you like how I combined them.
> 
> edited 12/14/19 for flow and to finish that one sentence. thank you so much to lee and others for listening to me whine and bouncing ideas around!

“Holy shit, you got tall,” Veronica laughs.

She props her bike up and shakes her hair free from her helmet before moving in with open arms. Acxa doesn’t _dislike_ hugs; she’s just awkward about them, like she is about most expressions of affection, all the more so with a woman in a spandex jersey. Still, she tries to mirror the warmth Veronica gives her. 

They run through the supplies packed into their panniers and their approximate schedule. Veronica offers a Gatorade, then bumps her own against it like she’s giving a toast. 

“Cheers to the road ahead.”

* 

The first few days are weird. 

She hasn’t actually seen Veronica since high school, almost eight years ago now. They talked a few times the first semester of college, then less and less, and it’s not like Acxa had any reason to go back home.

She didn’t think they were still friends.

But when Acxa announced on Facebook—briefly, and with great reluctance, but to preempt unnecessary conversations—that she was leaving Sincline with no plan for the future, Veronica reached out right away. Acxa doesn’t even care if she’s after inside information, her career exposing corporate corruption on the rise. It’s consistent with who she’s always been: warm, generous, principled. Grounded. 

Unlike Acxa, who’s always blown by the strongest wind.

So here they are. When you’ve been miserable for so long you don’t know when or how it started and your former best friend who in retrospect was probably your first gay crush invites you to ride a bike halfway across the country for her brother’s graduation—Acxa knows not to pass up an opportunity like that. 

*

“Did you see that Hunk and Kinkade got married?” Veronica says. 

This is easy, gossiping about people they once knew, the wind at the backs blowing tumbleweed down the road alongside their steadily churning legs. Easier for Acxa than talking about herself. 

“They were always good together,” Acxa recalls. She’s genuinely happy for them and relieved she can feel that way about something. 

“Yeah,” Veronica agrees. “Ina said their wedding was really fun. We ran into each other at Vrepit Sal’s last time I was back.”

“She didn’t like me,” Acxa recalls, thinking of several awkward group projects.

“She was scared of you,” Veronica corrects.

“Dunno why,” Acxa mutters. “I was scared of her.”

“Relatable,” Veronica laughs, shaking her head. 

Acxa takes a swig of water. “Keith is dating someone. Guy named Shiro.” 

Veronica hums. “I heard. Lance likes him a lot.” She looks over, curious. “You guys still talk?” 

“Me and Keith? Yeah.” Acxa huffs a laugh. “Nothing brings people together like lurking in the corner at homecoming, judging everyone else.”

“You were good friends,” Veronica says warmly.

Acxa nods. “So were we.”

Veronica gives her a look that makes her regret her words. “People change,” she shrugs, too casual, like it explains everything.

“Yeah,” Acxa agrees. “Not always for the best.”

*

Mountains turn to hills turn to dusty rust-red desert. Chatter turns to silence and back again. 

*

The landscape—not the natural one, but the modern accessories on top of it—starts getting weirder after they cross the state border. Big yellow signs advertise something mysteriously called The Thing; they throw around increasingly wild guesses at what it could be until they pass a big yellow building with the same name, underwhelming from the outside and answering none of their questions.

A space age diner is too intriguing to pass up for brunch the next day, hash browns a welcome change from oatmeal. They bum around town after that to wait out the drowsiness and the afternoon heat. The main street has a few other attractions: a dinosaur statue in front of the gas station, a souvenir store that sells all sorts of local interest trinkets from glittering geodes to alien sunglasses. Acxa buys a plant identification guide; Veronica, a “You Rock!” card for Lance.

Two stores down is an ice cream shop, a far cry from the minimalist aesthetics of the city with classic rock records and posters decorating every squre inch of wall. Acxa walks out with a big scoop of brilliantly pink prickly pear. The first bite explodes tart and sweet in her mouth, and it jogs something in her that finally, _finally_ realizes that she’s out, that she’s here.

Veronica grins at her knowingly, like they’re sharing a secret, over her own coffee colored scoop. “Remember that time you slept over and we ate an entire tub of Neapolitan?” 

“Mm,” Acxa remembers. “Those were the days.”

Veronica snorts; those were not good days for Acxa, and she knows it. “I’ve never met anyone who loves ice cream like you do.”

“It’s cold,” Acxa says, licking her spoon. “Like the depths of my soul.”

Veronica looks sideways at her like she’s not sure if Acxa is joking or not. Acxa isn’t sure, either. A moment passes where she suspects she’s made things awkward again—but then the corner of Veronica’s mouth twitches up, and maybe that’s all Acxa needed. Something light and free bubbles up until it’s pouring out of her, and they both stumble, laughing, down the road in the middle of town.

*

“It’s sweet, too,” Veronica says later.

“What?”

She glances up at Acxa with a little smile and then away. “Ice cream.”

*

They start and end every day with a short workout. Acxa is relieved that Veronica doesn’t give her shit for her disciplined routines, just joins in. 

A round of pushups, crunches, stretches, three sun salutations to redistribute some of the strain from the legs to the rest of the body. Acxa is determined to get her one-armed sideways handstands back; Veronica watches and cheers her on. 

In the evening, they stretch again, then do their own thing in each other's quiet company for a while before collapsing in their tents. Veronica usually scribbles away in a notebook, presumably working on one story or another, maybe jotting down notes of whatever damning thing Acxa has slipped about Sincline. With the headlamp, she’s the very picture of a renegade adventurer for justice.

Acxa flips through the plant book, trying to remember which ones she saw today, the exact shape and growth pattern of their leaves. She’ll have to start taking samples or pictures at least when they break during the day.

“Didn’t know you were into this plant stuff,” Veronica notes, looking over.

Acxa meets her gaze. “You never know when you need to be prepared for the apocalypse.”

“Zombies,” Veronica says solemnly, nodding.

“Aliens.”

“Robots.”

“Climate.”

“The fall of global capitalism.” Veronica pauses after that, looking at Acxa, almost assessing.

“Capitalism _is_ the apocalypse,” Acxa picks up.

“Better start studying, then,” Veronica says, her smile sharp and conspiratorial. It feels like a handshake.

Acxa tries to smile back, hoping it doesn’t come out as a grimace; she'll need to do more and better than she has before she can truly return the gesture. She turns in for the night.

*

The rhythm of the daily routine burrows into Acxa’s bones. The simplicity is liberating, nothing to do but keep moving, no choices to make except when to break for food and where to stop for the night. 

She likes traveling with Veronica; they’re pragmatic in similar ways when it comes to logistics, and the rough edges between them from years apart are softening back into the kind of real friendship Acxa forgot existed.

Acxa learns that Veronica still likes peanut butter and cheese sandwiches and shamelessly listens to Top 40 from ten years ago to lift her spirits. (So does Acxa, though she won’t admit it to anyone else.) She discovers that Veronica has a knack for phone photography that makes even the spindliest desert shrubs look dignified. She remembers Veronica is good at _everything_ , even making her feel comfortable. Her wit is sharper than a blade and her smile is warmer than the sun on their backs.

She’s more herself than ever. And yet there are parts of Veronica and Acxa senses she’s hiding, perhaps unconsciously—not that it’s any of her business. Why Veronica’s spending weeks on a bike. Why she’s spending weeks with Acxa. Why she always seems to angle her notebook subtly away.

Then there’s Acxa, trying to remember who she is herself—or maybe she’s just now figuring it out for the first time. 

*

Just past a border checkpoint, they ride past a series of advertisements for Sincline’s social programs: the big diversity push, the Kids Code! camp, the solar farms they’re investing in. Lotor’s self-satisfied smirk looms over them from the last one.

Acxa can’t stand the hypocrisy.

“Fuck that corporate philanthropy bullshit,” she bites out.

Veronica rolls her eyes at the sign. “Oh, you mean the biggest billionaire in the world doesn’t actually care about what his tech is doing to migrant kids?” Acxa doesn’t know what to say, anger precluding words, and Veronica wilts a little closer to her bike. “Sorry. I know it must’ve been different from the inside.”

“It’s not like I didn’t know what we were doing,” Acxa says bitterly. “It just—took a while to accept that it was real, and too long to do anything about it.”

“You gave a lot to get where you were,” Veronica says sympathetically. “It must’ve taken even more to leave.”

“I wish I left just because of that,” Acxa admits. Because her reasons were selfish too—she was sleeping at the office more often than in her bed, had a set of toiletries and extra clothes that she’d replace when she had time to stop by the apartment. She hadn’t taken a full weekend in months. “And my labor—our labor—was the bargaining chip. I just… ran away. Saved myself.”

“And now they don’t have you,” Veronica says gently. “You made a choice. I’m proud of you.”

Acxa flushes, but she can’t bring herself to contradict her. Maybe one day she’ll be proud of herself, too.

*

Her hair grows out, dark roots showing under purple. She likes it, though; likes the two tones together and how her natural color emphasizes the dye.

Veronica catches her running her hands through it one morning, pushing it into her face before she ties it up. 

“The purple still looks good,” she comments with a crooked smile. “Looks badass.”

Acxa snorts. “I look like I’m fifteen again.” 

“In a good way,” Veronica insists. “Have you kept it this whole time?”

“Couldn’t do it for work,” Acxa says, frowning. “It wasn’t professional.”

Veronica lets out a sympathetic _hmph_. “I see why you quit.” 

They load up the bikes and take off, frightening a flock of pigeons on the side of the road.

“The purple feels like me,” Acxa says. 

“It suits you,” Veronica agrees. “But you could pull off anything.”

“Is that sad, though?” Acxa says. “I’m, like, stuck on this person I was in high school.”

Veronica shrugs. “I thought you were hot.”

“God, I was so emo.”

“Yeah,” Veronica says, exaggerating a dreamy sigh.

Something twists between Acxa’s belly and chest. Something about chances missed and time lost and all the potential of the future yet to come. 

*

They climb steadily up to the high desert, lungs working harder in the thin air. The red rocky outcrops have faded to grays and browns, the flat expanse of earth sparsely populated with round silvery green shrubs and the dry versions they will become, the occasional spiky yucca jutting up.

By now, Acxa has a ziplock full of leaves and twigs and small flowers. Her book is marked to note which ones they’ve found, extra attention on the edible and medicinal and poisonous ones. They usually look around for new species when they take lunch, but Acxa shakes her head when Veronica gestures for the book.

“Nothing left but this same dead shit,” Acxa says.

“Come on, let’s do it anyways,” Veronica urges.

“It’s fucking _tumbleweed_ ,” Acxa grumbles, but she opens the book.

For the most part, the text says what she expects. Tumbleweed is the above-ground part of various plant species that detaches from the root or stem and rolls in the wind. But—

“See, look,” Veronica says, reading over her shoulder. Acxa is intensely aware of the front of her shirt brushing her arm. She doesn’t move away. “They’re carrying seeds. Spreading new life.”

Acxa looks over at her just to her side. “Not totally dead after all,” she concedes with a slight smile.

Veronica smiles back, so gentle, so close. “This is how they survive.”

Survive, Acxa thinks—that’s what she’s been doing. That’s all she knows how to do. She’s ready to live.

*

They treat themselves to cold beers from town that evening. They crack them open under an almost-full moon, dusty and crusted with three days’ sweat. 

Veronica pauses her writing and looks up at Acxa, who realizes she’s been watching her. She doesn’t look disturbed, though, just looks back evenly, inviting. 

“I didn’t know how much I missed you,” Acxa admits.

“I missed you a lot,” Veronica returns, “but mostly you being you.”  
“I fucked up,” Acxa says. She means about everything. 

Veronica sets her notebook down and moves slowly to kneel in front of Acxa, touching her hand to Acxa’s, who takes it. “I want to get to know the Acxa who’s turning her life around,” Veronica says with a gentle smile. “I like her a lot so far.”

* 

The night is cold, but Veronica is warm everywhere—her hands, her mouth. Her neck, the expanse of her back, the crease of her hips, and lower still.

* 

Acxa always moves or stays with purpose—physically, mentally, emotionally. Now she drifts, lets the darkness of the night swallow her up, feeling _good_ as she loses and comes back to herself. 

She presses her face to Veronica’s hair and murmurs, “I want to get to know the Veronica who put her life on hold to ride with me across the country.”

Veronica sighs, resignation or contentment, and turns away to pick her notebook up from where she’d left it. She passes it to Acxa, who opens it under the moonlight.

The pages are full of analysis not of current events but of self, notes not of grand wrongdoings but of the sensation of sun on sunburnt skin, of water running down a dust-parched throat. Doubts that Acxa skims over, not wanting to intrude, and hopes that she lingers on. There’s poetry, too, some of it fully formed and many brief fragments—

_let me hold her_  
_let her thorns scratch my skin_

“It’s a lot,” Veronica says quietly, “to always be writing and thinking about all the ways that the world is fucked up.”

Acxa pulls her back into her arms, holds her close.

“I ran away, too.”

*

Soon the faded arid beige turns to lush green and in the distance the buildings grow taller and wider. Neither of them has asked what comes next, but at the edge of the city the question looms overhead.

“I don’t know what I’m doing after this,” Acxa says, and for once it doesn’t scare her. 

“Want to keep going?” Veronica suggests. “See where the road takes us?”

For once, the answer is obvious. Acxa smiles and nods, and they ride together into the unknown.


End file.
